Аманда Палмер - The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

And maybe, by extension, a lot of other people. I looked out at the Women Of Microsoft, seeing present-day versions of my 1970s programmer mother. Maybe they all felt thoroughly misunderstood by their own bitchy, teenage wannabe-poet daughters. Who knew?

So I thought about all the things she’d told me over the phone , I said to the room, and I thought about her work that I couldn’t possibly comprehend, about the actual creative work she had done. All that delicate, handmade programming she did into the dead of night to switch one platform to another on some critical company deadline, how outside of the box she would venture to fix a problem… and how insanely proud she felt when it worked, and the true… beauty of that. And the sadness, too, because nobody ever, you know, clapped for her at the end of the night .

As I looked up into the audience, I saw that three or four women were sniffling and dabbing their eyes. My own throat tightened up.

She couldn’t hang her work on a wall. I can. I do my art in public. People applaud. My mom never really got that… and she’s retired now .

After the talk, I hugged a handful of the Women Of Microsoft, got back in my rental car, turned the radio up to eleven, and peeled out of the office park.

Take that, Fraud Police.

I called Anthony and told him that Neil and I had gotten engaged.

ENGAGED?

Yeah .

You’re not joking? You’re going to get married?

Yeah .

He was silent, then said, softly, You didn’t talk about it with me .

No , I said.

Anthony didn’t say anything.

I didn’t need to , I said. You’ve already told me everything I need to know .

Ah, that’s the perfect answer, beauty. Now go have your life. I’ll be here .

I gradually lined up a great band of musicians to help me make my next record: Jherek Bischoff, a bassist and composer/arranger who had toured with Jason Webley; Michael McQuilken, a drummer and theater director who had toured with Jason Webley; and Chad Raines, who’d never heard of Jason Webley—he was sound designer, and a keyboard/guitar-playing friend of Michael’s from the Yale School of Drama. (We briefly considered calling the new lineup Amanda Palmer and the Yale School of Drama, while toying around with possible band names one night, but then someone on Twitter suggested Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra. It seemed fitting, given the crowdsourcing and everything. We took it.)

My public song-delivery system, post-label, had been experimental up to this point, and I was deliberately saving my best material until I was ready to go to the fanbase for help with a full-length, brand-new record, to be released with grand fanfare. I didn’t want to just release this album into the Internet abyss with a blog post; I wanted it to feel bigger and realer, but without a label, my options were limited. After thinking about it long and hard, and strategizing with my office staff, we decided to use Kickstarter. We’d already used it a few times for smaller projects, and the fans seemed to understand, even love, it. Kickstarter also had its own little ecosystem of supporters, and I’d met and liked the guys who ran the company. My staff and I cooked up a schedule. I decided I would take the band into the studio, record all the songs using the last of my cash, then launch the Kickstarter to pay myself back. If we timed things perfectly, it should work out without a hitch. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Neil and I eloped in our friends’ living room in San Francisco, and used their children as impromptu flower girls and ring bearers. It happened suddenly. We had been trying and failing for months to solve the impossible puzzle of how to throw a Wedding The Right Way. We’d been looking forward to a simple dinner party with our friends, but called ahead to ask if they wouldn’t mind hosting a wedding before dinner. I brought three outfit possibilities in a bag, and let the kids pick. They chose the old Eight-Foot Bride dress. I’d made sure to wash it first. Jason Webley came along to officiate the ceremony with a poem, I wrote up some vows sitting in the upstairs bathroom, and everybody got tipsy and ate pie.

Someone had seen on Twitter that we were in San Francisco, and had offered us a free tango lesson. We showed up at her house the morning of our elopement. Neil was panic-stricken, and I wasn’t sure whether the panic was brought on by the impromptu wedding plan or the impromptu tango lesson.

I CAN’T DANCE , he kept insisting. I DON’TDANCE .

We didn’t tell our volunteer tango instructor that we were getting married in a few hours.

She gave me a pair of tango shoes. I had never tangoed. She positioned us chest to chest, put on a record, and waved her hands around, examining us from all angles, giving us directions.

No, no, no, Neil… you need to GRAB her… this is a dance about trust, and control!! It’s a whole dance about the difficulty of love!… Good!… Yes!… She needs to feelyou leading… and Amanda, Jesus, relax… let him lead… trust him… you keep trying to lead and you’re messing him up… STOP TRYING TO CONTROL THE DANCE! Foot BACK!!! GOOD! Now… trade!

I didn’t tell her why I was crying.

The Bride never spoke a word. I learned from her.

There is a difference between simply “being able to ask” and “asking gracefully.”

Sometimes asking gracefully means saying less.

Or saying nothing.

You can move your mouth to ask, but what is the rest of your body saying? What is the message behind the words? Everybody knows how it feels to be asked in a way that creates discomfort, whether the asker is a drunk homeless person on a street corner or the naked person in bed beside you.

Can we have sex? It’s been a month .

Could you spare any change?

Both can be asked with a sense of trust and graciousness, or with a sense of force and gracelessness.

Anthony once told me: It isn’t what you say to people, it’s more important what you do with them. It’s less important what you do with them than the way you’re with them .

You trust people too much, Amanda .

I always figured it was GOOD to trust people too much. Better than the other way around. Right?

One of my favorite ninja gigs of all time was on Hermosa Beach in Los Angeles. I was staying at my cousins Katherine and Robert’s cottage-like house a few blocks from the ocean, and I was beside myself to discover that Robert, age eighty-seven, could not only play the ukulele, he could shred the ukulele. He was like the HENDRIX of the ukulele, and better yet, he knew kinky songs from the Prohibition era about booze and women.

I twittered the next morning that I would play on the beach that afternoon, joined by my ukulele-shredding cousin, and requested people come dressed for a group photo shoot.

My request was granted, hundreds of Angelenos converged in all sorts of costumes, and after I’d played for about two hours (and cousin Robert slammed out a few songs on his old, splintered ukulele), I tried something new. I told people that the gig was, of course, free of charge, but if they felt moved they could toss money in my ukulele case (a wonderfully shabby antique trumpet case I found in the trash, and that also serves as a really handy purse, which is nice, because I don’t do purses). I left the case wide-open on the sand, tossed my treasured kimono down next to it, and gave my ukulele to a volunteer guardian. As the evening wore on I chatted, signed random things, hugged people, and took pictures. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the first person drop a few dollars in the ukulele case.